New shop

Hello again! Here are a couple of photos of my new shop space in Ballard, where I'm going to be doing the assembly and testing of the Soundplane. I got a nice used table saw, and first thing, It got used to build a room within a room. The shop building has giant ceilings, which is great, but it is not heated and so I needed a smaller space inside it I can insulate and heat, so that finishes and laminates will dry. My friend Christopher helped me frame the little space you see here and build a workbench.

We picked up the funny racing-stripe glass panes at my favorite used building materials place the Re-Store, a couple of blocks from the shop. They were exactly what was needed and were all of eight dollars in total. I think they were for a shower that never got built.

On the right you can see a few future Soundplanes. And yes, an Aeron chair from the dot-com bust.

On the software front, the new calibration is coming along very well. In just the last few days, thanks to my new filter code, the Soundplane has gone from being a promising prototype to a sensitive instrument that you can actually play. I'm going to turn this new work into a proper demo movie ASAP. I won't finish the client software for the demo, but do want to demonstrate OSC support and some of the calibration features.

New back panel

A quick update to share some photogenic progress. I got the new milled case from O.B.Williams this morning, and it fits the new aluminum back panel perfectly. In these pictures you can see the new rabbet for the panel, and the very tight tolerances we are holding with the milling.

I can't wait to apply an oil finish, put circuit boards in this beauty and make some sounds. That should happen next week. Until then, happy new year everyone!

Did you know...

Aalto could do this?

salisbury steak. [theme] [for garf and bnek] by mad brahmin

I didn't either. If that was too frantic for you, here's some ambient overtones:

AltoLow by Bsteele

Yup, the Aalto group on Soundcloud is still blowing the eff up.

New antenna, finishing touches.

The work to finish up the Soundplane is going well. What you see here is the new flexible antenna undergoing testing. It's a thin layer of copper deposited onto a white PET substrate. One nice thing about this material is that it's created additively, resulting in less waste than the traditional flex circuits we were using. It's also much less expensive.

Our supplier in the UK has shipped out what should be the final version of this part---I expect to get it next week. [...]

Website glitch

I woke up this morning to a dead website. The culprit turned out to be a simple lack of disk space. We are back online, fired up and ready to go again -- sorry for any inconvenience.

CEC 25th Anniversary Tour

I did the thesis project that eventually became the Soundplane while at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. So, even though all this travel is making me a bit crazy, I'm happy to be heading to BC this week to catch up with some friends and give two more demos. Please excuse the late notice, as here are the dates and locations:

Victoria, Tue Nov 15
UVic School of Music, MacLaurin building [Rm. B016] 4:30-5:30pm

Vancouver, Thur Nov 17
SFU / Woodwards complex, 149 West Hastings St., room 3420, 4:00-5:00pm

The Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) is an organization supporting electronic music in Canada, celebrating its 25th anniversary with a nationwide tour this Fall. I'm grateful to be included in the programs for both the Victoria and Vancouver events! Both days will include other demos, talks, and lots of great music. Find out more about the CEC Anniversary Tour here: [cec.sonus.ca].

Tour de Soundplane, SoCal edition.

Two great stops wrapped up the tour this week, first at USCB and then at CalArts. Many thanks to hosts Drs. Matt Wright at MAT UCSB and Ajay Kapur at Calarts. My brain and vocal cords got a bit of a workout answering all the great questions from people at each event -- the level of interest and knowledge that students brought in was really high.

Taking questions helps me out a lot by letting me get a handle on things I need to explain better. The Soundplane's discrete keys over a more continuous surface is one example. People naturally wonder to what extent the keys make the surface non-continuous or influence the playing style. I'm writing down some notes about this and what else to put in the "most excellent hi-res demo video" I'll be working on soon.

Some other highlights of the trip: getting to see the UCSB Middle Eastern Ensemble perform Egyptian and Iraqi music, amazing tacos at Señor FIsh in Eagle Rock, and more sun in two days than I'll get all the rest of the winter back in Seattle. I'll be zipping back to OAK up the I-5 tomorrow, then flying home, and after a day of rest I look forward to sending another update from the lab.

Tour de Soundplane day 3

On Saturday I brought the Soundplane prototype over to Robotspeak in San Francisco's Lower Haight, where there was a really great and attentive crowd. We played with the Soundplane and Max/MSP, and the alpha version of Aalto for Soundplane. Here's part of the introduction taped by Jack Hertz:

I also brought some copper foil tape and with my laptop's built-in audio interface, made a simple capacitive distance sensor showing the basic principle the Soundplane is built on. I hope this demo showed some possibilities for exploring DIY sensors. When I get time, I would like to post some more detailed instructions on working with this simple technique.

Thanks all for coming, for asking the good questions, and to Robotspeak for hosting me! It was great to meet some more of my interweb friends in person.

Tour de Soundplane day 1

I promised I'd post a picture or two, so here I am actually doing that. My day started at Brewed Awakening in Berkeley, home of a regular morning meeting of electronic music luminaries and a damn fine Americano. Perrin Meyer, David Wessel and Adrian Freed were in attendance. Don Buchla popped in for a cup of coffee, laid hands on the Soundplane and pronounced it a worthy object. Unfortunately he had to go before I could show him Aalto. Another time, I hope.

The next demo is at Robotspeak in San Francisco, this Saturday at 4. If you're in SF, stop by!

Meanwhile, in Aaltoland

Of course I'm working hard on getting the Soundplane into production. But meanwhile, people are doing great stuff with Aalto!

Mark Mosher sent this video of Aalto, controlled with the Percussa AudioCubes. It really shows off Aalto's drone capability with a super Forbidden-Planet-style patch.

SoundsDivine just released the Chaos Ripple patch bank for Aalto. More info here: [soundsdivine.com] Some of these patches make timbres come out of my synth that I haven't heard before. And they represent a wide range of sounds. Great job!

Finally, I'd like to point out the ongoing and interesting stuff coming out of the Aalto Soundcloud page. It turned into a really thriving group where there's great new stuff almost daily, from simple sound examples to finished tracks. People are getting their modular funk on. Here's the most recent entry:

are you or are you not somehow related to Android Samba Girl. by jumpy gunderson

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